sking?"

"I do not allow people to talk to me against my friends," replied she
earnestly.

"She was talking to you a long time I saw."

"Yes."

"It must have been an interesting subject."

"It was rather an unpleasant one to me."

"Ah!"

"She wanted me to join the 'circle' which they have just started at the
minister's house. She says that old Tituba has promised to show them how
the Indians of Barbados conjure and powwow, and that it will be great
sport for the winter nights."

"What did you say to it?"

"I told her I would have nothing to do with such things; that I had no
liking for them, and that I thought it was wrong to tamper with such
matters."

"That was all she said to you?" and the young man seemed to breathe more
freely.

The girl was sharp-witted--what girl is not so in all affairs of the
heart?--and it was now her turn. "Leah is very handsome," she said.

"Yes--everybody says so," he replied coolly, as if it were a fact of
very little importance to him, and a matter which he had thought very
little about.

Dulcibel, was not one to aim all around the remark; she came at once,
simply and directly to the point.

"Did you ever pay her any attentions?"

"Oh, no, not to speak of. What made you think of such an absurd thing?"

"'Not to speak of'--what do you mean?"

"Oh, I kept company with her for awhile--before you came to Salem--when
we were merely boy and girl."

"There never was any troth plighted between you?"

"How foolish you are, Dulcibel! What has started you off on this
track?"

"Yourself. Answer me plainly. Was there ever any love compact between
you?"

"Oh, pshaw! what nonsense all this is!"

"If you do not answer me, I shall ask her this very evening."

"Of course there was nothing between us--nothing of any account--only a
boy and girl affair--calling her my little wife, and that kind of
nonsense."

"I think that a great deal. Did that continue up to the time I came to
the village?"

"How seriously you take it all! Remember, I have your promise,
Dulcibel."

"A promise on a promise is no promise--every girl knows that. If you do
not answer me fully and truly, Jethro, I shall ask Leah."

"Yes," said the young man desperately "there was a kind of childish
troth up to that time, but it was, as I said, a mere boy and girl
affair."

"Boy and girl! You were eighteen, Jethro; and she sixteen nearly as old
as Joseph Putnam and his wife were when they married."

"I